Entropy
by Ember Nickel
Summary: FN-2187 is no Jedi, but he knows the Force. At least well enough to pass Captain Phasma's physics class. [AUExchange 2018 treat for Artemis1000.]


_For the prompt "The Force is demystified and researched and taught like any other field of science." Can be read as gen or pre-shippy if you like. :)_

"If I drop this on the floor," Phasma asked, holding a ball bearing aloft, "what happens?"

The trooper students stared silently at her in the large auditorium. The First Order's training gave them access to the finest holodesks and most up-to-date starcharts, but when it came to scientific inquiry, they had progressed no further than listening to meaningful questions and remaining quiet so as not to stand out.

"That was not a rhetorical question," she continued. "What happens?"

 _Hopefully you drop it on your toe and hurt yourself,_ thought FN-2187. Phasma's seeming enthusiasm at instructing the cadets was perhaps her most annoying trait. Other captains grew frustrated with being relegated to academic duty, and it showed; after a term or two, they'd be transferred out, to be replaced by someone equally bitter. But she actually appeared excited about indoctrinating knowledgeable, but unquestioning, Stormtroopers. Even if they were not as thrilled about participating.

JN-3046 raised her hand, and Phasma nodded at her. "It falls to the ground."

"Correct," said Phasma, doing so. The ball bearing rolled across the floor, where it came to a halt against the first row of seats. "Why?"

WL-2514 barely waited for Phasma to acknowledge him before responding. "Because of the gravitational attraction between the ball and the planet."

"Very good." Phasma updated the on-screen projection. "Although the mass of this ball is small, the mass of Juirom is large, and the distance between them is very small on a galactic scale. This, in combination with the gravitational constant, explains the interaction between them."

She advanced to the next projection. "Of course, gravity also is responsible for the revolution of Juirom around the star Taalriis. The force of the sun attracts the planet, so as Juirom moves, it never travels too far from Taalriis. Yes, KE-0841?"

"If the sun is pulling Juirom towards it," stammered the tall trooper, "why don't we...you know...fall into the sun?"

"Because the planet is already moving, so it naturally stays in motion," said Phasma. "Only the direction changes."

"But if you roll a ball across the floor, it stops."

"That's because of the friction acting on it. In space, there's nothing to interfere with the planet's orbit. You see?"

KE-0841's expression suggested that he did not see, but that he did not want to reveal his ignorance any further in front of the captain.

"Now," said Phasma, retrieving the bearing, "suppose I were to hold this up to a small magnet, here, and let go. What would happen?"

"They'd both fall down," said WL-2514.

"If I hold onto the magnet, and let go of the bearing."

No one spoke. It wasn't as if they had objects of their own to experiment with, personal possessions kept in bunkers during off hours. There were their uniforms and their simulation weapons, until they aged out of them, and anything they researched or wrote on the holodesks was logged and transmitted to higher-ups to guard against noncompliance.

"It depends," KE-0841 ventured, "on which side of the ball you put it on?"

"It's a sphere," said BG-6139, "they're all the same side."

Before the pupils could discuss any further, Phasma carried out the experiment. The ball dangled below the magnet, barely visible in the grip of her enormous glove.

"The entire mass of Juirom is still acting on the ball, just as before," she said. "But even this small magnet is enough to hold the bearing in place, due to the electromagnetic field it generates. So while gravity is powerful, it is much weaker than magnetism."

Phasma set the materials back down on the counter. "That will be all for today. For tomorrow, please watch Klyrau's lecture on the central and fragmentary fields."

She stepped down from the podium, and the cohort remained in their seats. There was still Sergeant Ruho's course on cosmography and Lieutenant Zivla's blaster drills to go before dismissal.

After dinner, FN-2187 obligingly turned on his holodesk to watch Klyrau, a public-domain Republic instructor who did not seem to realize where some of his broadcasts were being circulated. Why did they bother keeping Phasma around if a downloaded file could do just as well?

Better here answering KE-0841's questions than out commanding troops, he supposed, as Klyrau droned on about the unification of the fragmentary field and electromagnetism. FN-2187 wondered if the computer would track if he fell asleep before the lecture ended.

The next afternoon—to the relief of much of the cohort—Phasma announced, "Unless you plan to join the Academic Corps, you do not need to be familiar with the details of the central and fragmentary fields. You should, however, be able to identify them."

There were murmurs of discussion, mostly from others who had not completed the lecture, but also from WL-2514 who proclaimed that he was going to join the Academic Corps and much of Phasma's lecture materials were already beneath him. FN-2187 was torn. Seeing active combat did not appeal to him, and he didn't want to be one of those wash-ups stuck on sanitation duty. On the other hand, collaborating with egos as inflated as WL-2514's didn't sound like a great idea either.

"Who can name the other fundamental signals?" Phasma asked.

She called on BG-6139. "Um, hyperspace transmissions?"

"Well done. Yes, transit through hyperspace must exceed the speed of light, not be bounded by it like real space. This is how ships are able to travel from one end of the galaxy to another within reasonable timeframes."

No one spoke. They all knew hyperspace transit well, of course. Most of them had only been stationed on Juirom for a standard year. Before that they had been aboard ships like the Revival, and before that Yeirath Base, and…

"And the sixth fundamental signal?" Phasma interrupted.

It was JN-3046 who answered. "The Unifying Force."

"Yes." Phasma set up another projection. "All living things, even non-sentient life, emanate strength in the Unifying Force. Sentient beings with a high density of midi-chlorians can use the Unifying Force to manipulate objects in the physical world."

The next visual was an old Imperial recording. Darth Vader, clad in a mask and cape, had his arm outstretched. An officer was clutching his own neck, seeming to gasp.

"Darth Vader was a skilled wielder of the Force," Phasma explained. "He could use it to discipline subordinates. Kylo Ren inherited an elevated midi-chlorian count from him, and also uses the Force to serve the Supreme Leader. Questions?"

KE-0841 had raised his hand again. "Is the Force dangerous? Using it, I mean. Obviously it's dangerous if someone chokes you with it."

"It can be," said Phasma. "But no more dangerous than trying to lift an object that's too heavy for you, or fly a fighter without training."

"Is that—is that why Vader had to wear a mask? Because he used too much of the Force?"

"No. Lord Vader was severely injured by a member of the Jedi Order. The Jedi were an institution of Force-wielders who claimed to serve peace, but let chaos run rampant throughout the galaxy without lifting a finger, and refused to investigate the full power of the Unifying Force. This shortsightedness led to their extinction."

BG-6139 tentatively put up a hand. "Um, the Jedi? Did they allow nonhumans?"

"Yes," said Phasma. "There were sentient nonhumans with high enough midi-chlorian counts to join the Jedi Order. But the dissension and disagreement among them led to distrust, which was another reason for their downfall. More questions!"

FN-2187 glanced around the auditorium, hoping against hope someone would speak up. He didn't have to ask a question, he knew. Phasma would just move on. But finally they were discussing something interesting in class, and who knew when he would get the chance again?

At last he raised his hand, and Phasma had already opened her mouth to move on by the time she noticed him. "Oh. Yes?"

"Is it true that...I mean if the Force is just something like gravity, why would people worship it?"

"Primitive societies have many forms of culture and religious practice," said Phasma. "On remote planets such as Flinjol, the sentient species worshipped their sun, even though it's just another star. Similarly, with something as common as the Unifying Force, there have been various species and communities that interpret it as sacred."

"Huh," said FN-2187. It made sense in its own way. They didn't focus much on the cultures of isolated systems; there were too many to study even if it was relevant for maintaining security. But he'd heard heard of the Guardians of the Whills in his Informational Literacy classes years ago, and the images of Jedha had fascinated him even when the course was long forgotten.

"Now," Phasma began, "if you would please open your—"

"Excuse me," said WL-2514, who did not seem particularly troubled to have stalled the class once again. "What about the myths of Jedi ghosts?"

"That would be outside my field of study," said Phasma. "After the fall of the Empire, some rebel leaders spread rumors that Jedi spirits had appeared to them. If I had to guess, this was a bid for legitimacy by claiming to be the heirs to the previous republic's Jedi, but you'd have to ask Captain Ginorn about that."

FN-2187 wasn't sure whether that was meant as sarcasm. Yes, Captain Ginorn was their political history lecturer, but the man seemed part-droid. He never gave time for student questions, genuinely curious or otherwise.

WL-2514, however, would not be deterred from displaying his prowess. "Wouldn't that be a contradiction of the laws of thermodynamics? Organized systems can't continue that complexity without an outside energy source."

"Probably so," Phasma said. "Other questions?"

"Because once someone dies, their midi-chlorians couldn't survive indefinitely—"

"Other questions?" Phasma repeated tightly.

When no one spoke, she displayed the next graphic. "There are many interactions among these fields. For instance, electric charges are similar to the powerful ability known as Force lightning..."

She was still lecturing when Sergeant Ruho walked in, irritated at her tardiness. FN-2187 knew better than to assume WL-2514's question had been any more seditious than his many previous attempts at showing off his knowledge. Captain Phasma was trying to stay on-task rather than shut him down.

Yet it stuck with FN-2187 as he left the auditorium. Was the Unifying Force strong enough to let people persist beyond death? Travel freely, see the galaxy, pass on their knowledge, without having anything left to lose?

It was stupid, he told himself. There was no fairness in a power granting immortality only to a lucky few born with the right amount of symbiotes. And even if ghosts could return from death, why had nobody found evidence of one? The galaxy was full of eyes: living and bionic, sentient and simple. No one could pass through the worlds without leaving an imprint. Existing outside of matter, outside of the Supreme Leader's purview, was treasonous in itself.

So he slept like any other night, until he woke.

The creature standing near him didn't seem to be completely humanoid. But then, there were plenty of near-human species he'd seen graphics of. If the First Order was branching out to recruit some of them, that couldn't be all bad, could it? If someone could breathe Juirom's atmosphere and handle its gravity, they could handle some boring lectures.

He was sure, however, that human or not, the visitor was in the wrong place. "Uh," he whispered. It was still dark, and most of his roommates seemed to be asleep. "Girl's dorm's upstairs."

"Who are you?" said the intruder. A human-sounding voice, if an Outer Rim accent. But there was a strange blue glow surrounding her, like nothing he'd ever seen.

"Who am I? Who are _you_? What are you doing in my room?"

"You went looking for me."

"Are you crazy? Listen—" Recognizing that returning to sleep was not really likely under the circumstances, FN-2187 swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Go talk to an officer. There's no room here."

"They won't listen to me," she said.

FN-2187 stood up, and headed for the door. Lieutenant Gorff wasn't going to like an interruption at that hour, but it beat the alternatives. He took a step forward—

—and through the girl, like she wasn't there at all.

Okay. Maybe he needed to see a medic.

He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the galaxy to go back to normal, and found she was still there when he opened them. Great. He walked into the hall, and she followed him, through the solid rather than the open door. Well, if he was already going crazy, why expect his hallucinations to behave like people?

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Doctor's."

"Oh. It's too late to help me, but thank you."

"Help you with what?"

"I'm already dead."

"Dead people don't talk," said FN-2187. It was too early in the morning to be dealing with this. "Non-humans, whatever."

"I'm human! Or, I _was_ , anyway."

"If you're human, why are you all...blue?" That was an oversimplification; her skin was pale, and her hair looked brown, though it was hard to tell in the hallways' semidarkness.

But she seemed to get the idea. "I'm a ghost."

The memory of the previous day's conversation came rushing over him. "In the Force?"

"Yeah."

"But how can I hear you? I don't have any midiwhatever, nothing unusual anyway. I was tested as a kid, we all were."

"The Whills heard you calling out to them."

"What?"

"The Whills."

"Are they some kind of Jedi? More ghosts?" The Jedha images, haunting as they were, didn't go into detail.

"No, no. They're—not living, like you, but not droids either. They're within, within the midi-chlorians the same way you have midi-chlorians inside you."

"But not too many?"

"But they heard you, that's what matters. You wanted to know about the Force, so they asked me, and I came."

FN-2187 leaned against the wall. "Maybe I am just crazy."

"Well, I don't think so."

"You don't count."

"If that's how you're gonna be..." she said, except it was only her voice that replied. She had vanished from view.

Well, maybe he was crazy. But suddenly, the thought of spending another day having the lessons of the First Order drilled into him felt worse than even losing his mind. "No," said FN-2187, "come back."

And then there she was, examining him quizzically.

"Sorry," he said. "This is just...weird."

"I know. I don't really talk to...humans, much, living ones. So it's weird for me too."

"Can anyone else see you?"

"Only if they're looking," she shrugged. "I get the feeling most people around here aren't."

"It's not going to be easy for me to talk to you," FN-2187 realized. "I mean, when people are around. It looks like I'm talking to space. Can you read?"

"A little," she said, seeming to blush.

"Okay, well—I guess I shouldn't write on my desk, the system will track it."

"Don't you have any time on your own? Evenings?"

"Some," said FN-2187. "It's not like I care about the homework."

"I can wait," she said, smiling. "I have other friends."

"Really? Where?"

"Nowhere in particular. Most of them are ghosts too. A few don't—didn't have the Force enough to show up, like me. We speak through the Whills' songs."

"Okay," said FN-2187, heading back to his room. Sleep still seemed unlikely, but no less desirable.

"By the way, my name's Rey. What's yours?"

"I'm just FN-2187. That's all they call me."

"You don't have a _name_?"

"We're Stormtroopers. What would we do with one?"

Rey stared incredulously, then tilted her head. "They say one of the Whills who knows you is named Mado. I could call you Mado-root or Mado-hearth?"

"That sounds weird."

"Well, I'm not going to remember a bunch of digits, so you'll just have to be you."

FN-2187 gave a laugh. "That's enough."

It was harder than he'd expected to find a private place; usually he was content to study in his dorm or maybe spar on the rec levels. In the end he wound up reserving an enclosed flight simulator, and pondered maybe signing up for a work shift in some out-of-the-way kitchen if Rey hung around.

"This is cool," Rey said, looking at the sim. "You can play if you want, I don't mind."

"I've tried this a bunch," FN-2187 said. "Always crash within the first few minutes."

"Those fighters look new."

"I think they're a few years old. This was installed a while back, some idiot droid broke the last one. That was fun, I could usually beat it. Of course I was on novice level then..."

"What kind of ships?"

"L-turret atmoskimmers." At Rey's blank look, he went on, "Mix of Old Republic tech without droid navi."

"Oh, cool. Like a Corellian cruiser?"

"Not really," he said. "You've seen Corellian cruisers? Where are you from?"

"Jakku, I think. It was a long time ago. I hung around for a while after I died, there were some cool ships in the desert."

"How...when did you die? Or is that personal?"

"Not really. Eight years ago? Maybe nine?"

Was the image he saw—a young teenager, by the looks of her—a reflection of who Rey might have been? She would have been so young, too young to go wandering around admiring wreckage. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," said Rey. "It's nicer here. More friends, and I can learn things."

"You didn't know about the Force? Before?"

"Nah. Not a lot of schools on Jakku."

"But you had it, I mean, it was in you?"

"It's everywhere," said Rey. "Yeah, I had more midi-chlorians than most people, but so what? You can't eat them."

FN-2187 pushed away his pity. He could not solve all the problems in the galaxy, particularly those that had taken place before his time. Of all the First Order's lessons, that one had been useful. "Do you want to play? I just need somewhere quiet."

"Play what?" she giggled.

"The sim."

"Oh. I don't think I can? I don't really know how to make computers work."

"Oh. Sorry."

"I'm still learning," said Rey. "I could probably set it on fire if I wanted. My friend Ani knows some cool tricks."

"Uh," said FN-2187, "I'd just as soon you didn't."

"That's fine," she said. "So anyway, how long have you been on Juirom?"

To FN-2187's surprise, his supervisors didn't ask any questions when he volunteered for kitchen patrol. Maybe they'd just written him off as going nowhere. But despite the busywork, evenings soon proved to be the best part of the day. Rey would tell him stories of her friend Chirrut's mysticism—"He's like you, he couldn't hear the Whills, but he _knew_ they were there, annoyed everybody"—or Mace's acrobatics. "One time he was in a hovercar that was gonna crash, so he was able to lift his buddy out with the Force, and then escape himself, just in _seconds_!"

"How do you know?"

"Well, he told me. But I've met the other guy, he said it happened. Doesn't really talk much to us though, he just likes watching the inhabitable moons."

Despite his janitorial duties, he still went through the motions of studying for exams. At last, the end of Phasma's physics course arrived. "I can help you with the test," Rey suggested. "The others won't hear me, I'll just tell you what I know about the Force."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Because they don't believe in ghosts? You can just say it's a theory then. You'll get extra credit!"

"It's not...it's wrong to cheat on a test."

"What happens if you fail?"

"Maybe I get permanently put on cleaning duty?" Rey looked scandalized, and he rushed on, "That was a joke. I don't know."

"But they don't keep you back?"

"Maybe some people get reassigned. The ones at Yeirath who didn't do well...I heard some of them talk about an experimental program. Not sure what that was."

"Do you remember their names? I can go look for them."

"Their numbers? No, we weren't all that close."

She gave a look of dismay that often came over her when he referred to the ID numbers.

"What's the worst they can do to me?" said FN-2187. "Kill me? That's not the end, is it? I'll get to meet your Whill friends and everything."

"Don't talk that way," she glowered. "Maybe Eplia was right, I shouldn't have come."

"Okay, okay, it could be worse. They could make me go...I don't know. Abduct toddlers or something."

"Abduct toddlers? What?"

"Never mind." Her life had been short and unhappy enough; better not to tell her about his past.

Or was it? She had plenty of time on her hands, time to see the galaxy from afar. Maybe he was better off not knowing where his classmates had wound up, but could she find his family? Would she even want to?

"I don't want to to feel like you have to stay here," he said cautiously. "Your friends might have a point."

"I don't," said Rey. "But I _like_ hanging out with you. You're...interesting."

The way she said it might have been an insult coming from an officer, or a threat. From Rey, it just seemed praise. "Well, you're the most interesting ghost I've ever met. I like you too."

"How many ghosts have you met?"

"Just one. So far. But if I impress your friends, who knows?"

Rey lit up, not with her customary glow, but a smile. There would be more than one type of test in the days ahead, but FN-2187 for once believed that the arrows of time were not weapons to fear.


End file.
